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The Price of a Masterpiece

Fearing, Loathing and Maxing Out Credit Cards … Nickeled and Dimed in Las Vegas … Excerpts from Thompson’s Letters Tell the Story Behind his Magnum Opus …

TO JIM SILBERMAN, RANDOM HOUSE:
Thompson braced his book editor for the imminent expense bills from Las Vegas, which he acknowledged might seem “unreasonable,” but were “all in the interest of Journalistic Science.”

May 9, 1971
Woody Creek, CO

Dear Jim:

Here’s a copy of the finished parts of “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.” For ID purposes, this is “Vegas 1.” And, depending on how #2 turns out, there may have to be a brief “Vegas 3.” Maybe not. The necessity for a #3 would only come after a few hours on the phone with the owner of the Circus-Circus. If he’s the stone-Alger freak that he almost has to be, on the evidence, then I think it would be worthwhile to go down there and observe him at close range. Maybe get some insight into how his gig was done, along with some inside wisdom on the financial/leverage ethic of Las Vegas.
Only a genuine freak could have created the Circus-Circus. Which is where I finally found the American dream … […]

I had thought, until tonight, that [Rolling Stone was] into the whole project on the basis of that $500 they sent in reply to my desperate telegram from the Flamingo (yes — that one …), but as it turns out, that was my June retainer, not expense money, so as it stands now — after talking to [Rolling Stone publisher] Jann Wenner a few hours ago — RS seems to have paid $1500 (out of $2K) for Vegas 1, but so far I’ve paid all my own expenses for this thing (except for an original cash nut of $300 from Spts. Illustrated — and the Mint Hotel bill, which I never saw, for a variety of ugly reasons) … but in any event, I have a fairly hefty Carte Blanche bill on my hands, for Vegas 1, as well as Vegas 2, which is in fact quite crucial. This means you’ll be getting a bill for something just under a Grand in the very near future — to be applied, I trust, against the American Dream expense account, which to my knowledge is still capable of absorbing this amount. (Yeah, don’t say it — I know we’re nearing the end; in more ways than one, etc.)

Which is neither here nor there, for the moment. No doubt some of these expenses are “unreasonable.” Like renting a white Cadillac convertible and then soaking the bastard with the hard-crusted, sun-baked scum of 100 grapefruits and 2 dozen coconuts and 26 pounds of catsup and french fry residue — along with a layer or so of vomit and a goodly number of bad dings, dents, and scrapes that were covered, thank christ, by an extra $2 a day for total insurance. The car was not a happy-looking machine when I turned it in … but they just gritted their teeth and took it. (This is/was the Insurance side of the American Dream — the terrifying underbelly of Actuarial Tables.)

Anyway, the point is that you can’t send a man out in a f—king Pinto or a VW to seek out the American Dream in Las Vegas. You want to be able to come roaring into the Circus-Circus in a huge Coupe de Ville and know the insanity of watching people jump and run and salute and all that crap … which is crazy, of course, but the insane truth is that the difference between $15 a day for a Mustang and $20 a day for a white Cadillac convertible is massive in LA or Las Vegas. That extra $5 is a ticket to Their World — that and constantly giving dollar bills to “boys” for quick unctuous service. […]

Incredible. And I guess I’m just sort of talking off the top of my head about this — maybe laboring a bit to justify the “unreasonable” side of the expense tab. But of course this is not a reasonable story. This is a tale of gross excess on many levels. And those details are hard to fake. There is no way to understand the public reaction to the sight of a Freak smashing a coconut with a hammer on the hood of a white Cadillac in a Safeway parking lot unless you actually do it … and I tell you it’s tense. They don’t like it at all. It rips their nerve-ends in a very extreme way.

Like ordering two servings of “Crab Louey” in the Flamingo, then sending it back, uneaten, but covered with broken light-bulb glass. With cigarettes put out in the sauce, and the crabmeat floating in spilled gin … with maybe a condom full of Coca-Cola on the tray.

This is horrible. I admit it, and naturally I regret ever having participated in such a spectacle. But it was all in the interest of Journalistic Science. Or maybe Behavior Science. I’ve always been heavy into Science, on all fronts. […]

Ciao,
Hunter

TO DAVID FELTON, ROLLING STONE:
Former L.A. Times writer David Felton became Rolling Stone’s Los Angeles editor in early 1970, moving to the San Francisco headquarters as associate editor a year later. Known as “The Stonecutter” for his glacial pace and brilliant work, Felton was assigned to edit “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” for the magazine — which included handling Thompson’s expense accounts.

May 9, 1971
Woody Creek, CO

David …

You scurvy pigf—ker. I was just about to send you some mescaline when I talked to Jann & found out that all my daily expenses on the Salazar/Vegas stories were disallowed — for reasons of gross excess & irresponsible outlay. That $500 you sent wasn’t for my expenses at all; it was my f—king June retainer, which means I was spending my own money all that time.

Yes — for all those coconuts, for that hammer, all those lightbulbs, the White Whale … You treacherous pig.

So here’s the deal on the mescaline: The first two pellets will cost you $211 each (that’s the $422 in daily expenses that got disallowed) — and the other 98 will be free.

No wonder my attorney bought that Gerber Mini-Magnum in order to cut your throat. Shit, I paid for that thing, too.

You devious pervert. $211 is cheap for the likes of you. Don’t blame me when you get castrated leaving the building one of these nights. Rumormongers of your stripe shouldn’t be allowed to procreate, anyway.

I’ll expect your cashier’s check for $422 within ten (10) days; after that — when I’ve toted up my Vegas 2 expenses — the price will rise sharply. Up to something like $298.

You dirty Catholic bastard. I had you pegged from the start. If I were you I’d get my ass back to Azusa, or wherever that rotten place was that I got trapped in.

Sincerely,
Dr. Gonzo

TO JIM SILBERMAN, RANDOM HOUSE:
It’s even more remarkable that — by his own admission — Thompson WASN’T on drugs while working on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

June 15, 1971
Woody Creek, CO

Dear Jim …

Thanks immensely for the check. It came, unfortunately, in the same mail with a notice from Carte Blanche that I was Cut Off. I’ve cursed Wenner for making this nightmare possible by his penny-wise, pound-foolish fiscal concepts, but for now I’m into fighting with this goddamn computer. What your check does, however, is give me the leverage to bargain with the swine; I can at least offer to send them a check immediately, provided I’m reinstated. (This didn’t work with American Express; once the computer nixed me, I stayed nixed.)

Anyway, we’ll see on this one. But in any case I definitely appreciate the check. The only thing that vaguely alarmed me about your letter was your statement, to wit: “You know it was absolutely clear to me reading Las Vegas I that you were not on drugs. …” This is true, but what alarms me is that Vegas I was a very conscious attempt to simulate drug freakout — which is always difficult, but in reading it over I still find it depressingly close to the truth I was trying to re-create. To this end — and right after your letter came — I ate a bunch of mescaline and went to a violent, super-jangled car race last weekend with Lucian Truscott from The Village Voice, and I was relieved to find that we — along with about 10 other people — experienced the same kind of bemused confusion with the reality we had to deal with that Raoul Duke & his attorney had to cope with in Vegas. We were completely involved with what was happening — but our involvement was not so much on a different level as from a different POV [point of view] than the people in the grandstand around us. A man behind us was more excited; a man in front of us was alarmed at the behavior of a truck-load of freaks who seemed more scrambled than we were — but our overall approach to the race and the scene was consistently Strange, in the same sense that I tried to make that Vegas thing consistently strange.

But to hell with all this. What depresses me is your statement that it was “absolutely clear” to you that Raoul Duke & his attorney “were not on drugs.” Because my conception of that piece was to write a thing that would tell what it was like to do a magazine assignment with a head full of weird drugs. I didn’t really make up anything — but I did, at times, bring situations & feelings I remember from other scenes to the reality at hand. I might even claim, for that matter, that this was done by consciously tripping the fabled “LSD Recall and/or Flashback Mechanism.”

But this is a difficult subject, & there’s no point in trying to come to grips with it here. What I’m talking about, in essence, is the mechanical Reality of Gonzo Journalism … or Total Subjectivity, as opposed to the bogus demands of Objectivity.

But f—k all that, for now. All I ask is that you keep your opinions on my drug-diet for that weekend to yourself. As I noted, the nature (& specifics) of the piece has already fooled the editors of Rolling Stone. They’re absolutely convinced, on the basis of what they’ve read, that I spent my expense money on drugs and went out to Las Vegas for a ranking freakout. Probably we should leave it that way; it makes it all the more astounding, that I could emerge from that heinous experience with a story. So let’s just keep our personal conclusions to ourselves. … […]

Hunter

From Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976 (Simon and Schuster), edited by Douglas Brinkley. Used with permission from Douglas Brinkley.